over the course of american history. that was my favorite book. the trouble with the book is it is long. it's about 600 pages. as i was redoing that book now, iowa's split it into two books. you have to be a rather colluded greater rather colluded greater to read that entire volume. but for me, that was the book that i think has been the best that i've read. >> host: wife? it is off your beaten path of law professor, isn't it? >> guest: no, no, it is full of law. that regulated interracial sex in interracial marriage. and the last of the jim crow laws was the law that prohibited across the baseline, start

anonymous at the title case in all of american constitutional law, loving versus the commonwecommonwe alth of virginia. not another reason i like that book if it goes to an earlier question is whether people get in touch with me because a big portion had to do with interracial adoption. there's lots of people who read the book and now they were being frustrated by their ability to a drop across the race line and that book made the argument that nobody in the states ought not get in the way of people who want to adopt across the baseline and that book has been used very widely and legislation. it has been used in litigation. it has been used to in courage

people to adopt interracially and i am very happy about that. >> host: randall kennedy occurred on a tv in depth program. he discussed his entire body of work and we discussed that one as well. if you'd like to watch a three-hour program or parts of it, go to booktv.org. in the upper left-hand function function -- corner is a search function. watch it online at your leisure. peter is then used the dough, california. peter, did i say a right? >> caller: hi, yes. it is california and i'm honored to be speaking with dr. randall kennedy this morning. i just had a question. can you hear me? >> host: go ahead. >> caller: yes, i wanted to ask, do you believe that affirmative action in great measure to leveling the playing field and americans to begin

with for african-americans, each of those were turned affirmative action and do you think americans will ever see steep restitution? if not or if so, why? >> guest: in my view, affirmative action is at least in part a type of reparations. i mean, i think there're bunch of reasons and good reasons to support affirmative action. but i think reparations is one of them. reparative justice. i think this is one way -- we don't color preparations, but i think it has been a type of reparations and it is entirely justifiable. >> host: how do you think president obama has been on the issue of race? >> guest: well, he has been a very tough position as the first black president. and i think that being the first

black president, he has felt inhibited. i think he is keenly attuned to the feared allegation that he is showing racial favoritism to his people, so to speak. and so i think you sort of bent over backwards to avoid that sort of allegation. he's in a very difficult position. obviously, he has lots of opposition. obviously, he is an historical first. i think when you are an historical first, like the great jackie robinson, in a way, barack obama is the jackie robinson of the higher echelons of american politics. and just like jackie robinson,

just like jackie robinson had to take it, just like jackie robinson had to be twice as disciplined as anybody else, had to go for it may be saying some of the things that were on his mind, i think barack obama is in the same position. and that is what happens. so why give him -- i respect him. i admire him. has he done everything perfectly? of course not. that i think a given circumstance is, he has done in our world job. >> host: josh is in carbondale, illinois. josh, go ahead. >> guest: good morning. professor kennedy, i read several books and articles. i'm a big fan of your work. my question is i have a concern about some of the trends in higher education when it comes to affirmative action, were essentially institutions of higher learning are really

concerned about the racial cheyenne accent diversity of the freshman class. but they are not really tracking and looking at the graduation class. when you look at graduation trends, why students might graduate of 55% from a 60%, and african-americans might graduate a 25% or 30%. there has been to discussions on things like mismatch theory, which some of them are policies that actually for students of color, african american students, hispanic students into situations they are not yet prepared for. i am interested in hearing some of your comments on not. >> host: >> host: josh come >> host: josh, are you a college student? >> guest: i am a college professor. >> host: what you teach? >> guest: >> caller: intercultural communication. >> guest: first of all, that is a nice point of getting into

an institution. and graduating for destitution. they aren't have to be a tennis to off assets and off assets of collegiate life. college is seen to be falling down and not attending to the needs of the students. we need to be attentive to that. do i think affirmative action is going to change over time quite sure, affirmative action is going to change over time. the demographics of america change over time and with a change in demographics, we are going to see changes in affirmative action. very intelligent people who want to tweet affirmative action in various ways. one for instance to be more attentive to the issues of

class. i welcome that. i think we should be experimental. i don't think that because something has worked well in the past we should leave it alone. we should always be re-examining. so i haven't favor of racial affirmative-action. at the same time we should be re-examining our policies. one of the things we should take into account is the very issue we make. >> host: martin luther king, without regard to race or color. did i quote him correctly? >> guest: you know, martin luther king jr., it seems to me, is often misunderstood on this. there were certain things he said, for instance, his great i have a dream speech, in which i live in a society in which my children will be as fast on the basis of their character, not their color. that sounds like quote, color blindness. at the same time, i say the number of times in my book, martin at the king junior stated on many occasions been insofar

as black people have been held down, there needs to be special efforts to assist them in elevating themselves. so martin luther king jr. was in fact, in his own time, a proponent of what we now call affirmative action. >> host: randall kennedy is standing out here in the miami heat with us. we appreciate that very much. we've got more phone calls if you would like. >> guest: absolutely. >> host: marcel in goodyear, arizona. marcel. >> caller: thank you, mr. kennedy. i have one question for you. do you think it has benefited the african-american people at all? i work for the federal government and i see the federal government is the biggest violation of racism. you know, when i am when i am there working and i see the number of african-americans employed by the federal

government, if you're in washington d.c. or baltimore area, there's a lot more african-americans that are promoted up in hierarchy positions. but if you go maybe to the south and the west, that is not the case. so as out here on the west kind of struggle with the fact that in city government, federal government, we are not getting promoted to the level we should be. we are very capable people with college degrees and people come in have been in the system one or two years and make it over us. >> guest: a couple of things. number one, it's really a huge, huge, huge country. you know, different parts of the country i am sure there are different levels of affirmative action. inside different in different places. affirmative action by and large has beneficial, not only to

african-americans but countries as a whole. having said that, i've said several times in the past half hour. it's not like affirmative-action is a great panacea. it's not like affirmative action is to the great cure-all. affirmative action is going to only be helpful to people who get into college in the first place. frankly, if you are a plausible candidate for college, you are already doing pretty well. one problem frankly is it tends to how people who are already doing pretty well. affirmative action does not help in a strong way people further down on the socioeconomic ladder. before that, we need other

programs. so while in favor of affirmative action, i don't affirmative-action can do the whole thing. it's one of many things that has helped america get older some of these inequities in american history and some of the current inequities. >> host: "glee" in rockville, maryland. good afternoon. >> caller: gas, good morning, professor kennedy. enjoy the show. professor, i would like to ask you something. i live in rockville, maryland rapier washington d.c. and like most people, many people the washington area work for the federal government. i was perusing the vacancy announcements. i applied for this job at the government agency that i work for and i got an interview in a few months late i got a letter

back saying thank you for applying. we've selected someone else. and then in the newsletter, the agency newsletter, they had the announcement of the position being filled. the woman that got the job was an african-american woman with no college degree, no college degree. i of course have a bachelors degree from a very good university, a masters degree in business administration from a very good university. i'm also an adjunct professor of one of the local communities in the maryland suburbs. this woman who did not have college degree in opposition. i was wondering how they could defend affirmative action.

when this thing goes on. do you believe in easter by nancy in a cause. this goes all the time. >> host: lee, i'll tell you why. stay on the line. let's hear from professor kennedy and we will let you give a quick response. >> guest: number one, i defend affirmative action in principle. i do not defend affirmative action in every instance. i am quite sure there are mistakes made. and there are some places that have done that teams. any other programs. i will not expand in every other instance. it may very well be the episode you just mentioned is terrible

and if that is the case, that is very bad. at the same time, i don't think that you can use an instance or give me 20 instances. this is a huge country. it was a huge country, a program that involves many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, 50 instance is not characteristic of the way affirmative action has been practiced across american life. so i found something is askew here. this is a sort of thing that can actually discredit affirmative-action and that is bad. you can't expect of a policy that it will be perfectly done or even satisfactorily done in every instance.

>> host: lee, very quick response. >> caller: i understand your point. but anytime you start judging people on the basis of the color of their skin and not on the content of their character like martin luther king said. you are asking for trouble. you're asking for trouble. that is all i have to say. >> host: >> guest: okay, let me respond by saying martin luther king jr., you just alluded to martin luther king jr. take a look at my book. and make a big deal of this because again, martin luther king jr. is often cited as a person whose ideas were against affirmative-action. martin luther king jr. said expressly that reparative justice demands the special efforts be made on those who have been kept out of american life. the fact of the matter is across america, i could give you many instances of people who occupy

positions in government, who occupy positions in educational whatsit tuitions, high and low, who would not have occupied those positions but for affirmative-action. they got in because of affirmative because of affirmative-action and they have been important, positive contributors to american life. >> caller: yes, thank you for taking my call. it's been affected as you see berkeley after high school. my question to dr. kennedy is not far i think i got his name right, who understand is totally against affirmative-action.

>> in my book i talk about a leading anti-affirmative activist. i disagree very strongly with connolly and make my arguments against his arguments. now, i want to say, i argue strongly in favor of affirmative-action. at the same time, there are people who i think are perfectly good people, perfectly reasonable people who disagree with me. you know, i don't think that people who aren't not all people in the affirmative-action in my view are unreasonable or evil or anything like that. we are talking about a public policy about which people can agree and disagree. i think there are people who are sincere sleigh against racial oppression who want to elevate

america to a higher level, who is against affirmative-action because they think that the drawbacks of affirmative-action outweigh the benefits of affirmative-action. i disagree with them, but i want to caution people against thinking that anybody who disagrees with this point of view has to be malevolent or has to be ignorant. i don't believe that. >> host: what is your take on what is happening in ferguson? >> guest: my take on what is happening as ferguson is that it is an american tragedy. it's terrible. it shows one of the great weaknesses in the american legal system, which is lack of regulation of the police. now, that should have been evident before ferguson. it is evident today after

ferguson that a nation that prizes itself on being law-abiding needs to be much more attentive to regulating the agent of the government that most people come into contact with day in and day out. we are talking about people who have guns on their hips and the authority to use those guns and our legal system does a very bad job of policing the police. for me, that is certainly one of the sobering lessons of ferguson. >> host: so, the grand jury doesn't indict? >> guest: i would say frankly it grand jury indicts or does not indict, my scheme that would remain free of the same.

in any event, whatever happens in ferguson, we have a problem across the united states. it's not a regional problem. it is a national problem at every level the police are not held sufficiently to account and that poses a danger to all americans. >> host: three more calls. you've been very patient out here in the miami heat. rené is in dallas. >> caller: hello, hi, mr. kennedy, professor kennedy, excuse me. i am actually calling about. i am actually calling about one case that i have the luxury of sitting in on. it was out in san antonio texas. it involves a young man who's

never been in trouble before, part of a fraternity, and it was an incident from the uncle in the military never been in trouble before, but was very dicey to a captain or something of that store. it was an incident where he got angry at the wife. on the military base, unfortunately, decided afterwards to go ahead and go when she was incarcerated. you know, he called out to a nephew who of course has never been in trouble before. the family also military. and ended up being incarcerated or trusted because he had gone to the aid of this uncle.

once he had gone to the uncle, a lot of the information that exchanged because the sad story of okay, i have this one wife that was unfaithful. so needless to say -- >> host: b'nai, this is getting a little bit complicated for a call-in program. can you cut to the chase for the add? >> caller: i'm so sorry. i'll go ahead and cut to the chase. needless to say, needless to say, this is a young man that was a folk star and had all-white jury and that's no offense to anyone. all white jury. the jury found this particular kid guilty of conspiracy to shoot or kill.

forgive me. i don't know the legal terms. >> host: okay, you know what, i am sorry. we are going to have to let you go. i think that's going to go on a little bit long. any response, do you know where she's going with this? >> guest: i'm not altogether sure. the fact of the matter is the administration of criminal justice, the subject of my first book is still in the area of the racial context is very unsatisfactory. we need as a society to reevaluate how we punish people commend the extent to which we punish people. we live in a society in my view, which is just hyper punitive.

and we are wasting unnecessarily -- they're some people who do terrible things. we need to be protected. some people i really dangerous enemy to be protected against dangerous people. on the other hand, we have in our prisons for far too long, people who really represent the danger. this is an area that really bags for more study and for reform. >> host: what do you tell your kids? what do you tell your kids about interactions with race? >> guest: i have two boys. i have two boys and a girl. and i have had a talk that black people have had. unfortunately, i have told my children that they should be respectful to police. the police have a difficult job.

in my life i usually had good interaction with the police. on the other hand, anybody who reads the newspaper knows that black young man argued differently than others by police. and by the way, police of all backgrounds. i'm not just talking about by police. i'm talking about lack police, too. not only are they viewed as relayed by police, but as a matter of policy. so i told my sons that they have to be on their peas and keys. i told them that they should be respectful. i told them that if they are approached, if they are, you know, if the police stopped them, they should not argue, that they should do what they are told. even if they are being treated wrongly, be quiet, just do what

you are told. and something bad happens and a porch light the legal system is not going to do much to assist you. that is a sobering fact of life and is a fact of life that i have conveyed to my boys on a number of occasions. >> host: all right. ron in harbor city, california. they get quake. we are running out of time. >> caller: quick is good. i just wondered what your opinion would be about the president who is african, but he is way. and the one thing, the people he

sees one person with reverend al sharpton. they came from slavery. but the president didn't. he has no connection with slavery. i want to know, do you think that's how he got to be president in the sense that he beat hillary and that is what really happened to hillary. >> host: anything you would like to respond to their? >> guest: yeah, the caller makes a good point. my book before this one was the persistence of the things i point out is barack obama made a fateful decision about a young adult and that is what did he have to do himself. he could have called themselves many innings.

he could've called himself a variety of things. he decided to continue himself an african american or black. it is found that identity that he advanced his lies and that is what most people see a nonce. >> guest: before i go, let me say how happy i have to be on the show with you and how great a service that you provide. thank you. >> host: one more call. drinks are without water, please. you have been standing out here for an hour in the heat with us. domaine carlton, texas. you've got the last word. >> caller: i'm so sorry to hear the parity that went before me about the importance of immigration reform in states like texas that have been making legislation through the judicial system. also, if you could use the analogy of little steps made by small feat.

.. nono we matter what our occupation is, e are things day by day that can be done to better not only ourselves, but better our neighbors, better our society as a whole. and, frankly, it's the accretion of those small steps that make a

huge difference over time. >> host: what's the next step? >> guest: i'm writing a book, an legal history of the civil rights revolution. and that's going to be a big book. it's going to take a while to complete, but i'm having a lot t of fun doing it.. one of the reasons i'm having a lot of fun doing it has to do with the last caller's point. i get tremendous inspiration ini doing research about the civilil rights movement precisely because so many people, veryp modst people, very modest people do things day by day that havey made a huge difference. differee here so this is a book that i do, i have a smile on my face. it really is inspiring, and i want to tell their story so that's my next book.

>> host: randall kennedy, if you want to watch any of his previous times on booktv coda booktv.org, search in the upper left hand corner, type in >> you're watching booktv, television for serious readers. you can watch any program you see here online at booktv.org. >> coming up next, pulitzer prize-winning biologist edward o. wilson talks about what makes us human and what makes us supremely different from other species. he spoke about the topic, the subject of his latest book, at the free library of philadelphia. this is just under an hour. [inaudible conversations]

>> hi. before we begin this evening, i have just a few quick notes. firstly, if you haven't already done so, please make sure your cell phones are on silent. please note that there'll be no flash photography tonight, and after the event there's a book signing upstairs in the lobby. due to time constraints, dr. wilson is happy to sign your books, but he won't be able to do personalization. just wanted to let you know. welcome to the free library of philadelphia. it is my great pleasure to introduce tonight one of the world's most esteemed biologists and a very good friend of the library, dr. e.o. wilson. he's received the pulitzer prize twice for his engaging nonfiction that explores the intersection of biology, sociology and the humanities. dr. wilson's research explores the world of ants and other tiny creatures, illuminating how all

living things, great and small, are interdependent. as such, he remains an impassioned advocate for conservation and biodiversity, fighting to preserve the wondrous variety of the natural world. his new book bridges science and philosophy to create a 21st century treatise on human existence. dr. wilson's slim new book is valedictory book, according to "the new york times." he stands above the crowd of biology writers. he's wise, learned, wicked, vivid, miraculous. dr. wilson will be interviewed tonight by dr. shepard, a fellow at temple university hospital and a fellow at temple's center for bioethics, urban health and policy. he earned his master's in bioethics from the university of pennsylvania. he's also my husband which is perhaps the greatest accolade of all. [laughter] ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming e.o. wilson back to the free library.

[applause] >> good evening. well, it's good to meet you finally in person, dr. wilson, and as i'm sure michelle said, welcome back to the library of philadelphia and back to philadelphia. so i wanted to start off in just sort of getting to know you this evening as we were having dinner, i wanted to give our audience a chance to do that as well. one of the things i wanted to ask, um, you know, as michelle was going through your many accomplishments, you're a very talented man, and you clearly could have been, done extremely well in any field you would have chosen. what made you choose biology? >> a biographical question, thank you for making it easy. [laughter] >> we have to let dessert

settle. >> well, and not starting by saying, all right, what do you mean by existence? [laughter] >> we'll get to that. >> easy question. i grew up in the deep south where i had access to comfortable outdoor life almost every day, and in the course of which -- and i was allowed to, well, i wasn't allowed. my parents didn't know about it. [laughter] to go anywhere i wanted to go in the backwoods, the swamps and the river banks and so on of alabama. and northern florida. and during the course of which i just came to love natural history. and i decided that very early i would be an entomologist. i decided that when i was 9 years old, and i took a homemade butterfly net. we were living in washington for a brief period of time, and i

went out on, quotation, expeditions that i'd been reading about in the national geographic and gone to see frank buck movies. i thought that's really what i'd really like to do the rest of my life, be an insect collector, a tropical explorer. and i realized that was extremely, that's a little boy's dream. and to this day i am, i haven't changed. i'm about as immature as i was then. [laughter] >> which i guess gets to my next question, follow-up question, what about this field makes you so passionate about it to have been going at it, you know, at such an in-depth level for so many, many years. >> let me put it this way: there are perhaps 60,000 species of creatures that most people call

wildlife. they're mostly accelerate baits; the fishes, the amphibians, the reptiles, the mammals. and the birds. and when people talk about seeing nature, they usually mean they go out and they see the flora, and then they see, they look for usually the wildlife, the bigger, well known animals. but there may be only 60 or so thousand in the whole world of these. there are overall eight million species of organisms out there by estimate. right now we have, we've discovered and we have a scientific name for almost exactly two million species. but, and the rest somewhere in the city of six to eight million are still undiscovered by science. and these include what i like to call little things that run the earth.

the insects, the other invertebrates, a swarm through all of the habitats of the world. they really run the middle levels of the ecosystems of the world in the sea as well as on the land. and so is i became aware of -- and so i became aware of that fact early on. and because i focused on that, i only have one functional eye, and i can't hear very well in the upper registers. and what i did was, i have sharp vision in this eye, so i took insects at my main subject of interest early on as a boy and soon discovered that i had a whole world almost to myself. to explore and discover. and that continued when i got to college. i was working on organisms that nobody else was paying any

attention to, and i was making wonderful discoveries easily from year to year. i still use that personal experience to recommend to young scientists that they pick a group of organisms or a kind of phenomenon in these little known organisms to study, and they will have much greater chance of real success in discovery and scientific endeavor as a result than they would by taking a more traditional path. and that has held me transfixed ever since. and i still go on expeditions. i still do. >> fantastic, fantastic. well, i did promise, we can't be all biographical this evening, so i do want to talk about your book which is fascinating and a wonderful read. one of the things that you talk about in your book and that, you know, certainly i've come up

against in the practice of medicine is that humanities' modern lifestyle -- humanity's modern lifestyle has come to be at odds with the physiology we've used through evolution. use the example of evolution not having enough time to deal with our modern diets and our sedentary lifestyle, that sort of thing. but i'm curious with your focus being on the social aspects of humanity if you think the rapid advance of information and communication technology and social media and that sort of thing has created maybe a similar disconnect between how we socialize and how we live our lives now with the social mechanisms that we acquired through evolution? and what implications do you think that has for how we might interact going forward in the new modern age? >> you might call it which has resulted in something far more important and dangerous than stomach aches and early heart

attack, and that is the fact that we, we're still basically paleolithic in our minds, in the way our brains are constructed and our instinctive patterns. i would call our species dysfunctional because, one, we have paleolithic emotions. i don't think they've changed since the early homo sapiens of 200,000 years ago. we have paleolithic emotions, we have medieval institutions that we still depend on, and we have god-like power. now, that is a very dangerous and unstable combination. [laughter] and that's what, where we are now as a species. >> fair enough. [laughter] >> he didn't say expatientuate,

please. >> so one of the other areas i wanted to touch on, you talk a fair bit about religion in your book, and you've talked about it in your past work. and i think it would probably be fair to say that your book would leave one with the impression that you're not terribly fond of impression as a source of meaning for humanity, otherwise you probably wouldn't have written a book called "the means of human existence." so i'm wondering if, you know, you don't think religion necessarily gives us that sense of meeting and that we might have outgrown sort of the cohesion and tribal aspects of religion that made it so evolutionarily advantageous. do you think it has anything to offer in the modern era, or do you think we're best leaving it behind entirely? >> well, of course it does. actually the main argument i make is i think it's very natural for human human beings o wonder about that just beyond

our reach, and this whole perception of eternity and space and time, and i believe that human beings universeally share a strong tendency to share what might be called religion in the theological sense. the feelings and yearnings about the possible existence of god, of a supreme designer and maker of the world and the universe. we care about that a lot, and it's something important for the development of the human psyche. and we care a lot about whether there's a world beyond. i mean, that comes in constantly. we will be going to some other existence after death, that's very natural. it's group versal.

universal. and that binds people together, actually, that kind of searching in the theological sense. what does not bind us together are the organized religions, what we call faith. and what is faith? faith is the belief of a group, usually tightly organized by unquestioning belief in of a creation story. and of accounts of supernatural events. and each faith has concern and there are hundreds of -- and there are hundreds of them around the world and beyond that many more in the history of humanity. each faith has its own creation story, and it has its own stories of paranormal, actually, or supernatural events that occurred. and that's how it identifies

itself as a faith. but that's not what really binds it together. what binds it together is the most powerful instinct possibly of the social existence of human beings, and that's to form groups and to belong to groups, to identify your personal self and your future with that group and to submit in a way in the religious realm to the details of the creation myth and the paranormal. and that defines you. and it's, it gives you meaning. and that's what has, i think, given its enduring power. and it's especially so in the united states where people tend to join faiths according to accident or according to their liking or propensity. but beyond that what is being

expressed is tribalism, the need to belong to a group and identify yourself with it and depend upon it for all of your needs, your psychological needs, your, the expression of your strongest propensity to cooperate and belong. the problem is that different faiths compete. and no matter how gentle -- this is the argument, i'm not declaring this as some kind of dogma by any means. but the argument goes that no matter how gentle, no matter how charitable, no matter how tolerant members of particular faith are, they adhere to it, they submit to it, and they think of it and their group as

superior to that of all other faiths. they have to, otherwise they would move from faith to faith. which social psychologists have shown how this powerful insight manifests itself from early childhood on and that when groups are formed experimentally just for the purpose of testing it and those who participate know that it's just an experiment, they quickly when they form up the groups or have the groups formed, they quickly -- and they compete in some games or whatever -- they quickly come to believe the other group is rather alien and, you know, not quite up to their level and that they, their group is superior. this is highly adaptive in our darwinian sense, to believe in a group and to place your future, your life and your probability

of having offspring within the circuit of the tribe and religion, religious faith that is interpreted as a form of tribalism. and i would put it in a very strong manner by saying that faith has -- faiths, plural, have hijacked religion. >> so with that in mind as sort of the strong tribalism component of religion, one of the other themes that you mention in your book is this competition between individual and group selection where traits of an individual, like extreme competition, might make them thrive within a group, but overall a group of extremely competitive folks might do worse. and i got the sense that that struggle between altruism and competition is one of the things at the center of our existence as humans. and it seems to me that most of

the effort in trying to reckon that, sort of our moral discussion, has been centered in religion and the study of religion and conducted in religious language. with religion so steeped in tribalism and things that maybe are outmoded, do you think that it can still serve as the place to discuss those moral issues that are pressing, or do you think we need to move past that and have a new forum that's not at strongly, strongly steeped in the tribal competition? >> well, i think the major goal of philosophy, maybe religion as well, in the future is self-understanding. and you just touched on an area where science and humanities could actually come together in a very meaningful way. that's very much on the minds of a lot of scholars.

that's how we can bring science and the humanities together. and what would we mean by self-understanding? and that's why i use the word "meaning." meaning in this case is to the, to understand the meaning is to go past history which began really about the origin, about the time of the origin of literacy. to go past it and on into prehistory, into the lives and the activities and the development of intelligence and emotion of the species that gave rise to the modern human species. and then to go beyond that into the actual evolutionary processes which are biological that drove the origin of human, the human species.

and the way i like to put that is to say that history means nothing without prehistory. without understanding where our species came from in the near time of the last two million years. and prehistory means nothing without biology. we have to, in order to understand the human species, to understand ourselves, is to know something about those three great periods in the origin of humanity. and when you start looking into that then, you raise the question of whether altruism comes from, where does the religious impulse come from? why are we this particular way and not some other way in our instinctive, in our brain architecture and our instinctive behavior? is -- and i run risking going a

little afield here, but let me -- >> no problems with that. >> okay. [laughter] but one of the things i've done in studies of social behavior in all kinds of organisms is to search for known cases of social behavior in all kinds of organisms, particularly animals and especially terrestrial animals, that have developed highly advanced societies. not societies that are organized by intelligence. humans have that ability, reasoning. and intelligent planning. but those organizinged by a division of labor -- organized by a division of labor. that is, there are individuals that reproduce more and thereby contribute personally more to another group who are able to reproduce. and that this is part of a

cooperative structure of society that allows caste formation, division of labor and of highly effective operating units, the group. this capacity, we call it social, has to the best i can find and others looking for it, has occurred in just 20 lines of evolving species in all the history of life, to 20 times. conspicuously in the social insects, for example, conspicuously in human beings. and then the other thing that emerged is quite peculiar. in every one of those lines, the division of labor and, thus, the beginning of highly organized societies, was proceeded by a

particular adaptation, a line one or two species went through. and that is a female or a tale and a male -- or a female and a male build a nest which they protect. they lay the eggs, the female or the male go out and forage for food and bring it in and raise the young to maturity. that's a rather rare condition that you find, instinct-driven, in the imagine kingdom. rose 20 times. and it's very rare. most of those have managed to pass to that level and pass that threshold and now with the young who stay with the parents, and now you have a social society. they generally are extremely successful. the dominant creatures of earth among big animals are humans. and the dominant creatures of

the earth among the small creatures are the social insects, ants, termites, bees, cat pes. so -- wasps. so that explains part of it. but then what's going on? i mean, how does it happen that groups can form like that and actually divide labor and be cooperative and be altruistic? because that's the key questions when we start asking the meaning of humanity. what made us like that? and the answer -- and here i've just emerged from a controversy that i have on my side some mathematicians of very considerable ability and a growing group of younger scholars. it is not, as it used to be thought, that kin come together. kin helping kin makes it possible for, to bal i

truistic -- to be altruistic, providing they have some degree of kinship with you, and that's the starting point for advanced society. that's been the dogma for almost 50 years. now we've overthrown that by showing it's mathematically impossible. you can't organize and evolve a system like that. and no demonstration of it has ever been made with any kind of a measurement. the correct answer is -- [laughter] >> oh, dear. >> -- is what we call, forgive the technicality of this, and yet this is what the sort of thing that ought to be argued about and talked about in high school, is multilevel selection. that is to say you have groups that are formed. within the groups individuals are competing. that doesn't mean, you know, they're all having wrestling matches, it's just that some, with some genetic combination

you're more likely to survive to adulthood, you're likely to have healthy children who survive. that's darwinian. and the individuals are competing within a group. between groups, on the other hand, you're having whole ensembles of individuals competing with other whole ensembles of individuals. that's group selection. and the results of this is that there is a opposition of selection pressure which are intuitively familiar to all of you. and we use the mantra, the following mantra, within groups where individual -- select, it's called -- where individuals are competing, within groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals. when it's competition between groups, altruistic groups, groups of altruists beat groups

of selfish individuals. so social traits evolve by group selection, and the two that are constantly evolving to create the totality of a social behavior and all the instincts that organize it. and yet it's an unstable combination, ask we're constantly -- and we're constantly driven from one extreme to the other, and it cannot ever settle down and be stable. we have a word for that, that's called conscience, the conscience. and it is the source of so much of our creativity and the creative arts, our stories, much of our music, our jurisprudence deals with the conflicts of these two impulses that created us. and that's the explanation that

i think is emerging from biology. >> and i wanted to, i'm glad you brought up that struggle and how that informs the humanities, because i wanted to ask, um, you know, certainly in in addition o having this knowledge of prehistory, what other ways do you think science can inform the humanities to better explore existence besides just knowing our past and knowing the roots of that struggle that produces such beautiful art? >> we have just begun, i think, to find ways to bring whole areas of science now in contact with the humanities. in very creative and positive ways. in terms of the origin of humanity, the -- we should, we should, i think we should understand that if you're going to deal with prehistory, see, humanities deals with history mostly. but if you're going to deal with prehistory, where we all came from and so on, then you're

going to be having to deal with a lot of biology of the kind i just spoke of. and yet that's not so hard to understand once you start thinking it through. but the sciences generally, science generally is going to impact the humanity is. or how shall i say, form synergistically unions with the humanities. because science needs to study what's in the human a cities just as the humanities -- humanities just as the humanities need to know what the foundation of an ascetic sense, an impulse is why it is such and not some other. it's not, cannot be done by all scientists. never ask an astrophysicist about the meaning of human. [laughter] you know, they, they may try to answer it, and you are respectful, but they have no chance to do it. never ask an astronomer, never ask a chemist, never ask the majority of psychologists.

[laughter] never ask even my colleagues in molecular biology. they're too far removed from the subject of interest. who do you ask? and here i'll sound like i'm being dogmatic, but i'll defend it. you ask the following: evolutionary boil gists. they're the ones that study the genetic history of whole lines of species that go from one kind of life to another. ask the paleontologist, segwaying to the archaeology because in different time scales they know what's happening in the origin of culture. and adaptation to particular environments, and also they know the fine details of things like cranial capacity and from bone analysis what has been eaten by our ancestors 100,000 years ago

or a million years ago. and then ask the brain scientists. this is the big thing now, is the immense amounts of money being put into neurobiology to study how the brain works. and i believe that that, of course, is -- the grail is understanding the nature of consciousness. that's front page news as it develops. and so ask the brain scientist and neurobiologists about what the meaning of humanity is because they zero in on the centers of the sub conscious mind -- sub conscious mind and the conscious mind. the nature of mind, they're going to have a lot to contribute to self-understanding of humans. but then also go to technology. ask those working on artificial intelligence. and ask those working on robotics. that's where we actually will

carry on, are carrying on something like experimental and theoretical work on how a brain might work. because these folks, and i just met with a team to talk about some of these issues, these folks are very ambitious. they're not just trying to produce supercomputers and robots that remember what you want for breakfast. they are zeroing in on what are called the robot avatars; that is, robots constructed to think and act like a human being. not because we want to open the possibility of allowing the robots to replace human beings, but also by creating models of the brain and decision making and so on in robots we can find out more and more about how we do it. so i've gone on a long time, but this is important.

>> certainly. [laughter] >> you know, so ask those experts, and they're the ones that are producing the answer of what is the meaning of human existence. >> so i, andy's giving me the heads up that i have time for just one more question before we throw it out to the audience. and i'm glad that you brought up astrophysicists and folks who deal on a cosmic scale, because in one of the more widely-cited passages of your book you sort of put the earth and humanity into perspective, and i'll read this quotation out. you say that "earth relates to the universe as the second segment of the left antenna of an aphid sitting on a flower petal in new jersey for a few hours this afternoon." [laughter] now, we could spend a lot of time on why it's new jersey versus connecticut or what have you -- [laughter] but i was curious, you also in your book, you know, make a case that we have a unique role of sort of the mind's the planet,

the guardian of the bounty of biodiversity that we have. but if in the grand scheme of things and if in, you know, the cosmic scale we're a speck of sand on the beach, why does can it matter if we get any of this right? >> why does what matter? >> why does it matter if we get any of this right if we act as if the mind is the planet? >> well, for one thing we're wiping out, cheerfully wiping out the other eight million species out there. most of them we don't even know yet. we know two million species roughly, and very little about my one of them, and there's six million we estimate that haven't been discovered yet. and these create, this is the biosphere, you know? that razor thin layer of living organisms around this little planet that creates the conditions within the biosphere necessary for the life of those

millions of species including us. and what happened was that we didn't just be created and then having the right atmosphere and the right amount of fresh water and temperature regimes and so on. no, they were always there. we involved as a species over to particularly the last six million years to be exquisitely adapted to what's in that biosphere. and as we wipe out the biosphere, we're taking it on ourselves to be super engineers in the future to handle the levers and push the keys and take all the measurements to keep what was maintained automatically by the biosphere previously. we have to maintain it now ourselves with immense expend -- expenditures of energy. and that's a crazy way to go.

[laughter] that's why we should, we should have as part of the overall environment movement not just attention to climate change and pollution and so on, it should be devoted to the living environment. because that, if i might quote myself again -- [laughter] and i have a little, i have a little rule, and it goes like this: if you save the living environment, those other eight million species, then you will also automatically save the physical environment which is what our mind is on now. because in order to save the eight million species, we have to stabilize and return to some degree of previous normalcy the physical environment. we understand that, but we don't really understand that we are going to have to do that in order to save the living

environment. however, if you save only the living -- i mean, the nonliving, the physical environment, you'll lose them both. because you've taken away the means of existing of the other eight million species, you've taken the biospheric shield in which we live. >> so understanding our place in the universe and how we came to get there is, i guess, just a matter of resolving this internal conflict we have. it's a matter of survival. >> we do. and i'm inclined to think this is getting, this is getting, i guess, too blue sky even for my late excursion, but we really do have to start thinking of ways of making our moral reasoning transcendent. for example, i mentioned the that theological forms of wonderment and belief in deity

and so on, you know, the holding of this and the thinking of it is transcendent meaning it's shared by everyone. somehow we've got to make the population of the world more like one tribe and then turn to what you might call by definition if there's one tribe and no competing, faith to muck the whole thing up. you develop one tribe, then you have, you will have transcendent moral values. and we have some, but one transcendent moral value is to save the living world. and i'm going to -- i know you're a doctor. i'm going to borrow a rule from medicine, from the medical practice to apply to this very important part of our lives, and this rule is do no further harm

to the biosphere. stop right now! [laughter] [applause] >> thank you. [applause] thank you very much, dr. wilson. so we have some time for audience questions. so as we usually do here, we'll have some folks on the aisles. if you just hold off on your questions until you get the microphone. so we've got a gentleman over here on the right-hand side. >> good evening, professor. i have first two questions. first question, what do you think of the invalidity of mathematics of our -- [inaudible] because in abstract mathematics, we calculate an equation mathematically. but in experimental science when we calculate the means of an

equation, we calculate it with -- [inaudible] according to the experiment. so that is my first question. so -- >> we go to the first question and talk about that right now? okay. wait a minute. repeat -- can i'm sorry, i'm a little hard -- >> i will try my best, but i just want to make sure that i get this right. like to comment on the mathematical validity of the study of paleontology? >> yes. here is the problem. you mentioned the division of labor. unfortunately -- [inaudible] pretty much biologists are doing biology, and the mathematician are doing mathematics. but here exactly what i said, in abstract mathematics we use, we determine the demand of an equation in a mathematic way. but in experimental science

actually we, the method of determining the domain of a certain equation is supposed to be subjected to the limitations of the experiment itself. may i give an example? >> so how do we -- unfortunately, i don't think we have time. >> yeah. >> but a, how we, um, we marry that sort of abstractness of mathematics with the constraints of the real world. >> well, you just asked how does mathematics serve science, what is the role of mathematics in science, and in this area of biology, it's no different than what it is in physics or chemistry. mathematical analyses are, provide the models that are testable for measuring age of deposits, for example, and of the capability of organisms to survive under different

environmental conditions. it's empirical, we experiment with it, and we also use mathematical models to simplify the process in abstraction and then expand into areas of space and time where we can't do solid empirical work. but we can a mathematical model by any number of tests, and if the results of those tests intersect in what was predicted of the trajectory whether it's molecular fission and decline, then gradually we build an understanding of the process. that we call science. >> another question right here.

>> make it an easy one. [laughter] >> one of the features of human society is language, and i wonder if you'd like to speculate on the origins of human language. >> oh, languages, you're saying. >> language, yes. >> yes. that is an area that's not been studied in any great detail in terms of its origin by evolutionary process. we still can are not completely sure whether species as distant as our direct ancestor, homo erectus, and also our first cousins, neanderthals, really had language. but i'm pretty sure, i just have a feeling they probably did have

protoal languages. and in order to have a language, you have to have a vocabulary. that is what you call real language. you have to have a vocabulary that's flexible, and you need to be able to select objects and name them, you know, with a sound particularly. since we are an audio/visual species. one of the group, one of the very few in the world. most species in the world are pheromoneal, and our being audio/visual, incidentally, makes it possible to have a language. if we weren't audio and visual, we involve a language. -- we couldn't evolve a language. we don't know what ther into immediateuate -- intermediate steps were, but we know that one of the most powerful instinctive drives, propensities to learn parts of human nature, is that

of chirp to learn language, as you know. i mean, this is as impulsive in a child as it is to form groups. so that's not a very satisfactory answer, but -- >> [laughter] >> on the other hand -- >> it is a subject that we should be, the sign difficults, i hope, will be -- scientists -- >> hopefully inspired a young scientist in the audience to take it up, and we can discuss it later on the stage. all right. we have another question over here, gentleman back on the left there. yeah. >> dr. wilson, when cow -- when you talk about one tribe and then i think you say it also comes down to self-understanding. and so self-understanding is something that has to happen like one individual at a time, and so how does that happen in

a, when you have within the group or a society such as here in the united states where, you know, the selfish win? [laughter] >> i don't -- [inaudible] now, we're using self-understanding at two levels? you're speaking about the usual intuitive self-understanding of the individual who comes more and more to recognize and analyze and know why he or she feels the way they do. and what i was talking about was something quite different, and the species' self-understanding. that means just as an individual needs to know when and where they were born and what their parents were alike and what big events occurred to them through their lives that make them react

and feel certain ways, that's what you're referring to. then in a much broader space-time level, our species, homo sapiens, should understand where we came from. the real -- and what happened. the real questions to be answered for self-understanding of humanity are the three basic questions i suggest of philosophy and religion. and they are where do we come from, what are we, where are we going? and i think we are pretty close to answering where did we come from. we're beginning to approach -- we can do it assuming we bring science and humanities together in a meaningful way -- we're going to achieve, know what we are. and then we'll have a much better chance of deciding where

we're going without committing species suicide. [laughter] >> straight back in the center. >> there have been a number of groups lately who have claimed that the development of artificial intelligence will prove to be the greatest disaster for humanity. what is your thinking on that score? >> well, we've already created artificial intelligence. what would be an amazing achievement, and we're close to that, is something else, and that's what the artificial intelligence people who are mainly interested in practical uses of improving our intebltion, but the grail -- intelligence, but the grail as

defined within art initial intelligence -- artificial intelligence and robotics, we're nowhere near it. there's a name for it, it's whole brain emulation. and that is the goal of all these people that are thinking far ahead in developing artificial intelligence and robotics. that is, to actually create a robotic brain that operates like the human brain closely and to emulate the human brain, but you're not duplicating the human brain, but you come close to putting in all the functions that a human brain has. and it's there, of course, where we can eliminate any real risk that robots could misbehave or multiply themselves and so on. [laughter] but there's actually a controversy going among those who are working on whole brain

emulation and advanced artificial intelligence, and that is as to whether the brain is truly binary, digital, or whether it operates more as an analog computer. and i won't go into details because i'm not sure i understand myself very well. but the point is that's growing. there are two strains of thought going in the direction of whole brain emulation, ask one of them is an -- and one of them is analog, a belief the human brain is very different from any digital device we create because it does operate in an analog fashion with masses of cells working together almost like masses of people to bring the brain to perception and decision making.

>> one more. further back this time but still in the center. just keep your hand up there, sir. there we go. okay. >> while i find the idea of a unity of the humanities and sciences very appealing, i can't help but wonder even if we had a complete description of human evolution and an understanding of the source of consciousness, would that really inform moral philosophy? be how would that tell us anything about moral reasoning, which seems to be an entirely different sphere? >> you mean how can we further develop moral philosophy? is that the question? using modern technology? >> my question is whether -- even knowing everything about human evolution and the source of consciousness, how would that inform or how would that form the basis for moral reasoning? >> i'm sorry, i didn't quite --

>> so make sure i have this phrased correctly, so knowing the, um, evolutionary antecedents of why we came to think the way we do and why we came to be the way we are, how would that inform, help us inform making decisions or exploring how we should best relate to one another, is that -- >> how would it provide the basis for moral reasoning at all? >> moral reasoning, yeah, i didn't get that far in the discussion. [laughter] to tell you why it matters. these scientific studies. because i just explained the origin of internal conflict and the operation of what we commonly call conscience which is based on innate feelings that are essentially moral in nature. we know increasingly well or we think we know -- and, certainly, we're in the earliest stages of this kind of research -- that there is such a thing as innate

moral impulses. jonathan hayes at the university of virginia has taken this line of reasoning as well recently. and that is created by group selection. if you have group selection operating which gives, puts a premium on cooperation and the exercise of the better angels as we call them of human nature within the group, which is what group selection produces, then there is a limit to what kind and degree of moral reasoning and behavior that can be developed genetically. but it requires group selection. and so keep in mind we are a

very peculiar species, we're brand new. we're a very new species. we're in the earliest stages of our evolution. we can't even understand ourselves yet, and so where we came from fully or what we are and that we, we should make that as scientists, as scholars, people who are interested, even the think tanks in washington and on the op-ed page of "the new york times" should start thinking seriously about the real problems which deal with those domains where the science and humanities come together. >> we have time for one last question. gentleman up front here has had your hand up for a bit. >> thank you. dr. wilson, i've heard you speak about the biological probabilities of extraterrestrial life and life

elsewhere. would those intelligent creatures elsewhere have a creation story? must we have one? [laughter] >> you know, i'm going to -- i think that's a great question. is t. moral? is e.t. moral? does can e.t. have creation stories? does it have proponents of different -- yeah. in the early stages of evolution before they finally woke up and saw what they were doing. i think they would. because every line of the origin of advanced social behavior in the fairly brainless social insects and also in humans suggests that we -- [laughter] no, no. and the brainy humans. [laughter] that suggests that every one of

those went through the same sequence of events to get a highly evolved social system. and i think the principles are so basic, like having to have a genetic code to create a protein system of reproduction is so consistent that i think we would expect to see it occurring on other planets where life evolved. it's speculation, but i think so. i don't think they would want to kill us if they ever landed here. i don't think they'll ever want to land here. [laughter] even if they wanted to land here, here's something to think about and maybe, you know, saying don't, you know, stop worrying about e.t. or about ufos. even if they wanted to land here, they couldn't. not themselves. robots, yes, but not themselves. because the result would be a biological train wreck.

they're just too different systems. h.g. wells got it right, the bacteria did them in. [laughter] and i've even thought, you know, in my writings of honoring the man and calling it the wells effect. [laughter] in order -- the wells effect is in order to inhabit another habitable planet, is it first necessary to eliminate all life on it down to the last microbe? and when you totally sterilize it, then you can bring yourself and your domestic flora and fauna with it. >> well, fortunately now we've got google earth, so they don't even have to leave home to have a look armed. thank you all very much. [applause] thank you, dr. wilson. ..

it's great to be back and see so many friends. that story is a true story. in my book the invisible heart but i thought that was a nice example of personal

responsibility and learning about risk and danger. but i'm going to talk about tonight is adam smith. adam smith is the second best thing to come out of scotland. [laughter] you may know about his famous book which is the wealth of the nation. you may know that he was a free trader and you may have heard of the invisible hand. what i want to talk about tonight is the other book the theory of moral sentiments. it may be the greatest self-help book you've never read and what i tried to do in my book is give you a window into the insight into psychology, economics and applied them to modern life. what i want to i want to do tonight is give you an idea of what he can teach us about the world around us. i want to start with a story.

i was in london last week. i think it was last week. this year for sure. it was kind of a whirlwind trip. i'd never been on it before. i gave a talk at a place called the royal society of arts. it's old and it used to be called something like the society for encouraging manufacturing the arts and commerce and now it's addressed the royal society and ideas and it is a wonderful place and they have speakers. before i gave my talk i was in the room off to decide and the side and they put out things to drink and eat. there's a couch and a couple of chairs and some cookies and drinks. in the corner the only interesting thing is an enormous green leather chair.

this one has a beautiful wooden arms with a carving around of a carping around the top and it says the president or presidential share was designed by william chambers. i looked him up and he's a famous architect of his day. he built a house that was a ridiculously large building where i was talking and he designed his chair and it said the president's chair, 1759. and i got kind of excited for two reasons. 1759 was the first year that it was published. second, i've been told before my talk that adam smith had been a member of the society of arts. so it was possible that adam smith had sat in this very chair in 1759 when his book came out that i was writing about. and i thought wouldn't it be fun to sit in this chair, the same

chair, my bottom could sit in the same place that adam had also been. there was a sign that said do not sit in the chair. [laughter] but there was no one in the room. so what did i do? i want to suggest two things. adam smith has a deep understanding of why it wanted to sit in the chair. whether i sat in a chair or not i want you to think about whether he would have sat in the chair and after all i am an economist, so i sat in the chair or maybe i didn't commit to understand the psychology of this i want to tell a story from my book that i used to help see

the insights into the celebrities. you think in 1759 there couldn't be that much celebrity, no cable tv, no talk shows, no magazines. but smith was aware of how compulsively interested we are in famous people. and here's a story that in modern times helps get at his insight. ted williams the greatest baseball player of all time have a very distinctive car. he had a cadillac coupe deville and he had a buddy who every day it was a great friend to have someone that wasn't always spying on him and was just his buddy. he used to drive him around in the car and when he was out of town sometimes he would borrow the car. so one night jimmy had a date.

he said i've got a date. can i take your car, so he picks up his date, goes to the restaurant, pulls it into the parking lot and the police car pulls up behind them and says argue a baseball player because you are driving the ted williams car. so he was publicly speeding while the the time and never got a ticket but his car was very well known among the boston police. the cop said okay, no problem. why don't you are in the restaurant would it be okay if i sat in the car. [laughter] he said that is no problem. they come out of the restaurant an hour and a half liter and the cost is in the car with five of his friends. they are just sitting in the car

like me. they want to sit in the same -- it doesn't really -- it's embarrassing. what is the road or excitement of sitting in his car if he had been in the car i understand he's not in the car. adam smith wasn't in the chair so what is the appeal. and he says that the celebrity draws us and demand of rank and distinction is observed by all the world. everybody is eager to look at it and can see by sympathy that joy and exultation which is the circumstances that naturally inspire him, his actions are the object of the public care. if we care through people we imagine what their lives must be like and we want to be a part of it and he says this helps us understand how sad he gets when

famous people die. and listen to what he said. this is unbelievable. first he talked about the emotional investment we make in people but remember don't know us, can't see us and yet we have this connection of them. when we consider the condition of the great in those colors, and which the imagination painted it seems to be the abstract idea of a perfect happy state. we imagined they have this perfect life. it's the very state in which all of our dreams and idle reveries we sketched out to ourselves as a final object of all of our desires. so we see this perfect life that could have been me. that's what i was hoping for. we feel there for a sympathy in the satisfaction of those that are in it. we favor with their inclinations and the proper role of their

wishes. but did anything spoil and corrupt the situation can and then smith says that's why it is so hard for us to see them die. he says we could even wish them in mortal and it seems hard in the perfect enjoyment it is cruel and nature to compel them from their exalted stations to that humble but hospitable home that she has provided for all of her children. everything that hurts them is an emotional connection that we have on their misfortune of their tragedy, there -- it is ten times greater than we have for other people. so we have this ridiculous and air national obsession of greatness of the people who are rich and famous.

so were the kings die and are assassinated and politicians were killed we have an emotional reaction far out of line with what you would think would be relative to people that we know in our lives. so, smith understood that in 1859 people listen to famous people even if they didn't have much to say and even now can car -- -- kim kardashian is breaking the internet as i speak. [laughter] as i gave this talk imagine if angelina jolie and brad pitt walk into the back of a whole because the hall because they always wanted to know more about smith. and they are in the back and how long would it be before the lecture was to be disruptive? they would be much more interested in anything i would have to say, i would be more interested in them than anything i would have to say. we would be obsessed with wanting to see what they were

doing and what they were wearing. so of course i wanted to sit in the chair. one might suggest based on the caricature that people have about adam smith, he was about greed. he was about to naked self-interest in keeping the greed is good, yet there is nothing about that in the wealth of nations and the opposite is true in the theory of the sentiments. in the theory of moral sentiments he counsels constantly against the overly attracted to the pursuit of money, fame and power and the evil and corruption of ambition. so many economists would say is that in the chair sit in the chair because the costs are zero and the benefits are the thrill you get from sitting in the chair. smith i don't think would have agreed and he didn't see this as a virtue. he's all human beings have felt interested in at the wealth of nations is about our interactions across the space

dealing commercially with strangers who are interested in how trade led the specialization that led to spare any and led some to be all he and some not to be but in the moral sentiment he's interested in the relations with the family, friends and people around us. smith's perspective captures in many ways the essence of his ideas of what makes us tick. he says they naturally desire not only to be loved but to be lovely. not only to be loved is to be lovely meaning not the everyday meaning of the two words that we have but love meant honor, respect, admire, worthy of attention. people pay attention to you. meaning worthy of being respected and being praiseworthy

so he said deep down what we care about and what creates true happiness is that we are respected and honored by those around us and we honor that truly and honestly. it's a very deep thought when you apply to other people as well and you start to see how people are pushed and influenced by that very natural human desire to be honored, respected, loved and praised. but we also want to be lovely. the chair would have to be there. so it is selfish and wrong to sit in the chair. i am going to probably get away with it but it's the wrong thing to do. it's not just with other people

singing to you. if i want to be loved i do care about what other people think that i want to earn vast and be a good person and so therefore i have a desire even when no one is watching i am watching. so i didn't sit in the chair and decided i wouldn't call you because i want to be loved, right clicks i wish i had the tape. so what smith is saying if he is trying to give the origins of our conscience and he says something radical it seems to me he is saying that the conscience doesn't come from religion. it's doesn't come from your parents or upbringing. your conscience comes from the desire to be pleasing and honorable to the people around

you and you learn about what is honorable and good and peace and by watching what other people do when other people do things good and bad and when you see something good to get honored you take a mental note not literally, you're not keeping it though we often do take such nodes that we are talking about the subtle signals we send to each other through our myriad of dalia interactions we learn about what's appropriate and what is not. then he said something very profound. he said there are two ways to be loved. we all have this inside us. man naturally desires only to be loved but to be lovely we want deep down hard wired people to approve of us and there are two ways to get the approval. first is to be rich, famous and powerful and we know that works. we know that kim kardashian is

breaking the internet right now. she's powerful i guess. but politicians, wealthy people come actresses, actors, athletes, singers, we are drawn to them and they leave a very kill your life. smith talks about this a lot and i talked about in my book and the the actuation that you become accustomed to when you're famous. i told the story of when marilyn monroe came back from korea she told her husband it was unbelievable he said you can't imagine the crowds reaction. he said yes i can. what was that like for the politician who is dumped or

whose term ends? they had the king captured by the romans in the street and he's miserable and says why are they miserable she's been captured by a humane people. he's not going to be shocked. his kids will get to go up fine, he will have money, he will eat won't eat well and have a nice roof over his head. what is he miserable for? because no one is going to be sucking up to him anymore so his wife is awful. i recently heard a story of a rabbi that was sent to the gulags during the post-world war ii era. if you haven't read that book you should read it as a thank you note for the courage it took to write that book.

it's three volumes, so if you don't want to read that can read the gulags. it's fantastic. it's a horrible thing where they take people and make them work hard and don't feed them much and it's awful. a ten year sentence is usually a death sentence. often a ten-year ten year sentence was a death sentence. so this guy says you are so happy. why it is awful. we have no food and we work all day. he said while before my job was to get people close to god and now my job is to get people close to god so i have the same job as before. he said you were a banker, you were an important you have money and now you are a prisoner and have nothing in your miserable because you post what gave you your sense of identity which was

money and people paying attention to you. his life is radically changed so smith is saying we are gong to money, the world's greatest economist complaining about money. he says we are going to money, fame or power but ultimately it won't make s. a much happier then anything else. the pursuit is extremely destructive. he says it is better to become loved come, to be wise and virtuous. it means being wise and virtuous and to be lovely, smith really says it is a two-step process. the first step is to be proper, to act with propriety to do what people expect of you. and in a huge part of it is about propriety, something we don't talk about much in fact the kind of make fun may come of it but what he means is

conforming to what people expect so that if you have a tragedy or success you know how to interact with people differently depending how close to you they are or not. smith says if you have a great success you're better off probably keeping it mostly to your self. he says the man that has a sudden revolution of fortune is lifted up all at once into the condition of life above what he formerly lived in and it may be assured of may be assured that the congratulations of his best friends are not all of them perfectly sincere. he said every time our friends succeed i die a little. if you have a big success and you share it with people, they will pull back. he says julie is a very nice emotion. so he will be happy with you and

they can emphasize with your success. tragedy is the opposite. a great tragedies is even a stranger can emphasize with you. you lose a loved one which happened in 1759 and if you lose a loved one to a stranger can empathize with you not as well as a person that is close to do so he says the person that suffered the tragedy was how things have emotions because he knows that the stranger cannot fully in place but they are trying to and getting closer but they cannot create a perfect match. he talks about this almost a musical metaphor that we are constantly interacting with people around us to understand what they are going through and we ourselves know people around us cannot fully understand what we are going through and how we do that is what he's talking about. but the goal is virtue and he

has three big virtues and none of them are agreed. they are prevents, take care of your self, take care of your body and your financial situation, don't be reckless. it don't hurt other people, don't steal or rob and hope other people when you can. that is the worldview in a nutshell. we want to be loved and lovely. we have a pool to be lovely and animal feed ways, money, fame and power if we are better off going on a quiet path but it will be better for us and it will be more honorable to be lovely and virtuous and that is smith's advice. now, he understands we have a terrible time so he knows not only do we want to be lovely and

if we are not lovely we at least want to think we are and that is a terrible problem smith understands and write and writes and write about it very eloquently so it is easy to notice the faults in others is not so easy to notice our own. smith said sends an amazing line he is a bold surgeon whose hands does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person. think about that. we can diagnose and operate on people around us, on ourselves not so good. we are not so good seeing ourselves as we truly are. she says we are very uneasy about lifting what he calls the mysterious veil of self-delusion , i'm sorry, devotion that we cover our act with. we cover our moral deformities from the people around us because we don't want to be seen

as bad people but better people but we also cover them from ourselves. said he says this deception is responsible for half the orders of dalia life and i suggest maybe that is an underestimate. and he says we he can only see ourselves as others see us we would have no choice but to reform our behavior and be different people, rather remarkable. he gives us a way to see ourselves if we choose he invokes what he calls the special dictator. a person that we imagine watching us who is impartial, isn't against us, but is judging us and when we are in the moment of a crucial moral decision or dalia interaction when someone says can you help me out or do me a favor he says we step out of ourselves and we ask ourselves what would an impartial spectator say when observing the choices.

we give life to that idea by watching the actual spectators who judge others approve of our behavior would disapprove. and we of course have a name for that that is called culture. he says that's where we get our judgment about what is right and what is proper and what is an appropriate and what is in proper. now in the heat of the moment, self-interest which is often in conflict with what is the right thing. often we will be seduced into the wrong thing but he says nature as has a way of reminding us later maybe i was a little bit selfish when i skipped the funeral or when i didn't finish that friend in the hospital or a worked on a project at work.

i want to close this part by reading what smith says about our self-interest. though it may be true that every individual in his own naturally prefers himself to all mankind. true. we are the center of the universe. so each of us prefers ourselves to mankind yet he doesn't dare look them in the face of. he's also in the preference they could never go along with him and how natural it may be to him it was image must always appear excessive and extravagance to them. so, we want to do what is best for ourselves but we know that if we always act that way the world will not judge us kindly. growing up that's what growing

up is about, maturing. when you are a child it is mine, mine. when you're an adolescent you are the center of the universe and if you are lucky you start to realize there are other people that think they are the center of the universe and it may be interacting with them is a good idea and don't put yourself first overtime so that is the vision of our psychology in a nutshell that is his vision of what the good life is all about and how we behave in this adventure that we call life. but he also has a lot to say about what creates a good society for people to pursue a good wife. i will open up for questions. he argues that our desire to be approved and honored and and honored and praised and respected by those around us and our desire to their action and

their behavior that creates through no one's intention civilization. it's a remarkable claim. he says the author of the nature has put inside this desire to be judged favorably. he says they have made us the judge of all of mankind. so we judge each other. we are the deputies to keep an eye on the people around us. that doesn't work so well. what's remarkable is that anything descend happens given how self-centered we are to tell you a story of what happened to me a long piece lines i had a chance to go to california to spend one day with my wife without our kids what happens about once a year, so we are

pretty excited to have a vacation day. the only problem is we can't find a place here for one night. it is a strange place. you can stay for about $800 a night. if you want to pay less, which we did, it is hard to find. there are no real hotels, so you have to find a cabin. all the cabins had a two night minimum and we were only coming for one night so finally i said we are going to pay for tonight and if we have one but enjoy it. we are going. we said we would like to come but we really we really like to come for one night. we will pay for two nights. very happy to take to protect price of one. she said that there is a problem. it was only a couple days before we were going to get there. you won't be able to get me the check in time so i will leave it unlocked.

you come in and when you leave the next day just leave the cash on the kitchen table and my cleaning lady will pick it up and give it to me. and as an economist i found this very alarming. [laughter] my first thought, well that wasn't it wasn't my first thought but i'm thinking of different scenarios. one would be what if when i got there i had a really good time and either said paying two nights for one doesn't seem fair i will just leave one night worth of cash or better yet i might say let's leave zero. and when the cleaning lady doesn't find it and goes and tells the landlady that i didn't pay i will just say the cleaning lady stole it. who is going to know. that's a scenario number one. number two, i believe the cash, the cle